Ok so me and a Lutheran began discussing the celebration of “reformation day”. I mentioned why in the world would you celebrate the body of christ dividing, and he gave me this long ole explanation. Can someone please tell me if what he wrote is true, all I said is that the Lutherans CANNOT be the church that Christ started. Please, I need help…

[quote=RomanRyan1088]Ok so me and a Lutheran began discussing the celebration of “reformation day”. I mentioned why in the world would you celebrate the body of christ dividing, and he gave me this long ole explanation. Can someone please tell me if what he wrote is true, all I said is that the Lutherans CANNOT be the church that Christ started. Please, I need help…

There’s a lot of stuff he said. You should try to confine your questions to individual points he’s made. But, suffice to say, no, what he said is not true. OK, so there was corruption in the Church back then. That’s true. So why not try to rid the Church of corruption? That is a good and noble thing, that many Catholic saints have endeavored to achieve throughout history. But Luther did not just try to rid the Church of corruption. He also cooked up a few false doctrines, the failure to repudiate which was the cause of his being excommunicated. He indeed left the Church. As did those who followed him. I suppose the person’s claim that it is impossible to split the Church is true. Luther didn’t split the Church. He simply left it.

The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church is, indeed, the Catholic Church. The person’s claim that the papacy didn’t come around until 495 is, simply put, hogwash. Sure the term “pope” may not have been used, but so what. There was a Bishop of Rome who had long-since wielded the authority of the successor of Peter. Here is but one of many quotes, dating from AD 253, more than 2 centuries before 495, by Cyprian:

“With a false bishop appointed for themselves by heretics, they dare even to set sail and carry letters from schismatics and blasphemers to the chair of Peter and to the principal church [at Rome], in which sacerdotal unity has its source” (Letters., 59:14).

We see in this quote, the habit of both heretics and Catholics to appeal to Rome when there was a question of true doctrine, Rome from which Church unity has its source.

The claim about the Papacy not starting till 495 is downright silly. Saying that “there wasn’t a separate Roman Catholic Church” is just as silly as telling Lutherans “your church didn’t exist back then so it can’t be the true Church.” All Christian churches that exist today are descendants of the “Catholic Church” of the early centuries. We can argue about who is the legitimate descendant, but that’s going to depend on our theological perspectives. There is no knock-down historical argument, though I admit that you have more evident lines of connection than we Protestants do. But ours are quite clear as well.